Athens-area lawmakers field concerns on education spending

Government and business reporter

Athens-area social service advocates on Friday pressed the local state legislative delegation on the importance of pumping cash into education.

Three of the delegates, Reps. Spencer Frye and Chuck Williams and Sen. Bill Cowsert, met with the a variety of advocates at the monthly Whatever It Takes community interagency meeting in Athens. Sen. Frank Ginn and Rep. Regina Quick had scheduling conflicts.

Frye and Williams predicted a short session thanks to the ban on fundraising during session and election campaigns gaining steam at the state level.

Williams, a Watkinsville Republican, said he could see the session ending as quickly as the middle of March.

The quick session and elections could also be cause for a lot of headline-grabbing bills with little chance of even making it out of their initial committees, said Athens Democrat Frye.

Both noted that the one thing required of the General Assembly: passing a balanced budget.

Without predicting outcomes, Williams said he expects lots of grandstanding with the education debate and rumors of vouchers cutting into general education budgets. Frye echoed prior criticisms of taking from public schools to make way for charter schools.

“If you have a road with potholes in it, there’s no reason to build another road right next to it,” he said.

“You fix the potholes.”

The more complicated issue was raises for teachers, the delegates there said.

Cowsert said there was initial interest among legislative leadership in bumping budgets to give teachers a raise only to hear push back from local districts that matching the associated salary increases could wreck their budgets. The majority of districts in the state are still running fewer school days as a cost-saving measure.

Nonetheless, Bertis Downs, a “parent-at-large” at the meeting, pushed for solutions to keep good teachers in schools.

He said retention of the best teachers is at a “crisis point,” citing a recent departure at Clarke Central, though he wouldn’t name the person.

Now, Downs said, teachers need to turn students into “good test-taking automatons or find another job,” lest the school district gets rid of them in favor of some cheaper “newbies from Teach for America,” the national nonprofit that brings recent college graduates to low-income schools.

The criticism didn’t end at K-12.

Greg Davis, a retired educator and now a community mental health counselor, said increasing requirements for GEDs discourages those already disadvantaged without a high school diploma. Changes he cited include shifting the test to a one-time affair — before, students could take one section, such as math, and return to take reading — and a push to make the test harder.

“These folks need an opportunity and all we’re doing is erecting barriers,” he said, characterizing the approach as, “Oh, you can jump over one that’s 3 feet? Let’s make it 5 feet.”

Cuts to GED teacher staff also hurts, he said.

Volunteers simply aren’t filling the gaps to help students that otherwise are bringing the motivation needed to pass.